Mel Johnson

A Nutcracker without magic is a sorry sight indeed. The suggestion of magic and miracle around every corner is what drives the ballet. All the good things of the world are offered to Clara. And yes, the Prince and Drosselmeyer are the same, by way of the nutcracker itself, which often rather resembles Dr. Drosselmeyer. The Nureyev production relates rather well to the story as translated from German by Dumas pêre. Anyway, bless Grinzstain and Hoffalt, and Maestro Rhodes for creating art in difficult circumstances and also bless the petits rats of the school, who seem, on this occasion, to have been changed into chevaux d'or to deliver the Christmas presents to the audience!

That was Alexander Minz, and his Drosselmeyer had a subtext so sub, that nobody could figure out what it was! It brought out the worst in the armchair psychiatrists: "He represents Baryshnikov's relationship with his father." "He represents Kirkland's alienation from her sister." "He's been smashed the whole time, and is just wandering around getting in everybody's way."

Balanchine was the best.

He needs to be an old bachelor with an obsession for gadgetry, someone who'd blow his nose on his handkerchief after taking it off the nutcracker he'd just fixed -- eccentric, queer in the old-fashioned sense (and maybe in ours), whose bridge back to society is made through his fantastic understanding of what appeals to the imagination of a child.

Yes, to all points. It is useful to remember that part of the backstory is not only based on "The Nutcracker and the King of the Mice", but also "The Sandman" which is also a basis for Coppélia.

Good point. In the apotheosis at the very end of the ballet, the original production didn't have the Prince and Clara/Marie fly off in a sleigh, as in the Balanchine version, but remain to reign over the Kingdom of Sweets. The backdrop flew out, and they were seen in front of a gigantic beehive, which sort of looks like the Imperial Crown of Russia, which is surrounded by dancers dressed as bees. A beehive is good. It has honey inside, but outsiders should beware, for bees can sting! (a little political statement there) Balanchine's version does remain true to the original general plan, but with the nephew/Prince added, there's an additional dimension of possibilities as to what's happening. (Maybe they're flying back home to her house!) It satisfies the backstory, which you don't have to know to enjoy the ballet, whether it's in the nephewless or nephewed version. And there's another creepy thing about some productions. Nephew and uncle have to relate to one another in that traditional relationship. Some stagings verge creepily into near pedophilia. Ick.

You gotta love Stukolkin's too-long breeches (obviously Dr. D. was much stouter at one time) and his sailor's stockings!

Dolin also played Drosselmeyer for the premiere of the Grands Ballets Canadiens production, too. My favorite was Shaun O'Brien with NYCB. He was even better than Balanchine, when he took the part. And the reason that Tchaikovsky doesn't quote the Drosselmeyer leitmotiv later in the score is because of the libretto and the choreographic plan, written, respectively, by Ivan Vsevolozhsky and Petipa. It's in Hoffman. Try to find it in the Dumas translation. The original is way scary and weird. Remember that Hoffman was among the 19th-century Neo-Gothics. The last we see of Drosselmeyer is sitting on the capital of the grandfather clock, flapping his coattails and arms. In Hoffman, there's even a song he's supposed to be singing, along the lines of, "Zig, zig, zig, the Mouse King's time is up!"

That having been said, I cringe inwardly when I see that a choreographer has "gone back to Hoffman, and made it more authentic to the original fairy tale". Let me just say that if you were really true to Hoffman, you'd have crying kids running from the auditorium and some adults, too, scared out of their wits! The original "grim fairy tales"! I also don't care for retired premiers danseurs performing the part as if they're about to break into Albrecht at any second! Drosselmeyer is an odd duck. He's funny-looking, but good-hearted. He does have good sense about him, he's a City Councillor, and is there because of his long friendship with the Silberhauses/Stahlbaums. (Dumas is the "silver house", Hoffman is the "steel tree") He is loving, and gentle, but is rather unlovely to look at. (It's part of the Mouse King's curse) Balanchine added the nephew part to add credibility to the idea that after the lights go out in the house onstage, most of the rest of the ballet is a dream. Or is it? We're left with a question much like another fantasy, Harvey. Is Elwood hallucinating because he can see the rabbit, or are we just a little off because we can't? Is this exclusively Clara/Marie's dream, or are we peeking into the world of magic and miracles, where we are not usually accustomed to go?

Another thread just put me in mind of a long-unused score, "The Doll Fairy" by Joseph Bayer. The libretto is similar to "La Boutique Fantasque", and if you want a clear conscience (the Massine Estate has the rights on the latter nailed down) and a one-act ballet suitable for and with children, the choreography to the former ballet has been lost forever. You can create on your own, only the composer will be somewhat past reaching. And no, there is no Columbine and two Pierrots - that's "Feya Kukol". You won't hear a note of that music in Bayer. I don't know why the Legat Brothers claimed that it was from "Puppenfee", but I'll bet it had something to do with rights even ca. 1900. The Legat pas de trois is music excerpted from Drigo's Harlequin's Millions, best known today as the basis for Balanchine's Harlequinade.

Levashov was a principal with the Bolshoi and played grotesques and character parts. He was von Rothbart the first time I saw the Bolshoi do Swan Lake. He also did their "Paganini" in the title role. "Walpurgisnacht" was mostly Shamil Yagudin's party, but Levashov did it, too, and was very impressive and expressive. Excellent actor, excellent dancer.

Bart is entirely correct; this setting of this ballet does not rise or fall on one ballerina. It has a beautiful balance of many different qualities which form an admirable complex harmony throughout the whole work. In the 1892 production, even Petipa said of Antonietta dell'Era, the original Sugar Plum Fairy, "She's no good, but she's what we got! " Balanchine even took the original critical complaint that the ballerina didn't dance until far too late in the work, and, since he had moved her variation to before the entry of the shellboat with Clara/Marie and the Nutcracker Prince, that just left the male variation, which is a particularly wheezy tarantella, and the coda. Since the male variation wasn't very inspiring, Balanchine left it out, so that the Cavalier can be especially brilliant when he begins the coda, not being tired out from having an intervening variation. Like I said, masterpiece! Yes, OBT watchers, tell us how the show goes!

A very good review indeed, although I would differ with the "museum piece" analogy as a negative. Should we stop looking at Michelangelo's "David" because it's old? Balanchine's version is a near-perfect preservation of the original libretto and method of stage production which preserves the magic, which impressed the writer as a big positive. The 1892 version of the ballet did use children for children's parts, which feature is violated at the stager's own risk! Balanchine even tipped in the unused entr'acte from Sleeping Beauty to fill in a little, not too much, logic before the transformation into the world of magic. He did include the Nutcracker Prince's mime speech from the original, which, well-performed, as I have seen a number of times, gets applause for its thumbnail summation of Act I! I used to have a quibble with the "old" way Balanchine handled the Grand Pas de Deux, but then he reincorporated the chiffon scarf and the little wagon under it, recreating the original special effect! The Sugar Plum Fairy just used to do a line of bourrées to the very big recapitulation of the main theme, a curious dissonance between music and action, but then, I never saw Tallchief do the role, so I don't know whether it was such a dissonance with her doing it! The Balanchine, to my view, achieves the nice narrow balance of spookiness and joy. OBT is to be congratulated on having a great Nutcracker tradition of its own, with the previous "Russian" version, and now this masterpiece in their repertoire!

I guess you could include a mother in Law, but it would take 10-15 minutes of pantomime to explain to the audience who the Mother in law is. Lest we forget Cinderella involves a Step Mother, I did the pantomime with a painting of my dear departed wife.

Now see, that's a very intelligent way to express "my late wife and my daughter's mother". It would be universally understandable, and not involve a whole lot of classical mime, which the audience (depending on culture) might not get. We keep forgetting the Father in the ballet, who, unlike in Disney, is still alive, but his second wife (the Stepmother) bullies him around, too!

Oh, yes, the "Chopin" morceau is in the 1895, too. It's part of a collection of piano pieces which Drigo selected to flesh out the very short (something like 15 minutes) Act IV, which was historically a problem. The Odile variation is yet another part of the same suite of music, that selection entitled, "The Mischievous Child"! So while there may not be malevolence in it, there is at least some mischief.

I have to agree with the old aircraft repair saying, "If the damn thing works at all, don't fix it until it's completely busted."

I think that Stowell was trying very hard to NOT do anything Balanchine-y, NOT do anything Christensen/SFB, and NOT do anything like the old Fedorova Ballet Russe production, that he couldn't get his own voice in there edgewise, and restricted himself out of making a positive statement of his own.

And a word about Drosselmeyer - he shouldn't be around during the second act, or anytime after the Nutcracker transforms. The Nutcracker Prince is the original Nathaniel Drosselmeyer in Hoffman, under a spell of eternal ugliness from the Mouse King. Having someone who loves him in spite of his lack of beauty breaks the spell, and he is transformed back into his original handsome self. Between Dr. Drosselmeyer, the nutcracker (totem) and the handsome boy, we have a dreifachsgänger! Talk about mothers-in-law!

Of course, "Rossignol" passed from the active ballet repertoire even before I was born, but tours chaînés déboulés are old, old as the hills. There's even a chaîné papillon, allegedly dreamed up by Marie Taglioni for her student Emma Livry. It would have to be a distinctive use of the step which can be very tiny in terms of travel so you can use them as great little time-killers if you have a ballerina who can do lots of turns, which Markova could indeed do.

Closer to the exact quote is "It is very difficult in classical mime to express, for example, 'your mother-in-law'." (Balanchine/Mason, Stories of the Great Ballets (1954?)

Oddly, the 1895 audience would have seen the ending as ultimately happy. The lovers die, but the Evil One is defeated, his spells are broken, and the souls of the two who had sacrificed themselves are seen floating over the surface of the lake, ostensibly to Paradise.

If he had helped with the e-version, it would make it even MORE interesting, though.

What a wonderful tool! It's certain to offer hours and days and weeks of fun and instruction! Thank you, rg.

I wonder why the problem is more relevant in the USA which are always shown off as a free country where racisism is abolished,it's a problem to be gay.

WHOOT! WHOOT! WHOOT!!!

The US hasn't even gotten rid of nativism from the 1840s, when they had a political party called the "Know-Nothings", who would burn down somebody's house, or maybe take them into the woods and hang them (lynching) then, when questioned, they "didn't know nothing." Usually, the victim was a "foreigner", A Catholic, A Jew, a free person of color, etc. Anything to make them "the other". Politicians in the US have seldom gone far wrong (in the practical, not the ethical sense) in getting themselves elected by exploiting fear and hatred of "the other".

This "Swan Lake" sketch is as much about Balanchine having fun with the movies as it is about entertainment. He does several highly illogical things, sometimes for theatrical effect, other times for the purpose of parody. I love it when he has Christensen wading (in armor) out into the lake and draping himself over the model "castle in the distance".

Probably both, depending on who you talk to.

Thanks, Janet; one of the other things that happens to boys is that the girls in some schools make it very apparent that the studio is their "Girls' Club" and are backed up by their parents, so the boys face hostility both outside and inside their own field of endeavor.

In a review of the original setting of this work, one critic noted that the "Légende de Joseph" featured Les Jambes de Joseph. Massine's legs were very knotty and muscular. Try to find a picture of him wearing tights - I don't know if there are any! The review stung him that badly.

I'm going to keep my own counsel here. One of my favorite ideas for a ballet has already been mentioned, so I'm not tipping my hand a millimeter.

If I remember correctly, he used the "Danse des petits cygnes" for the pas de neuf, the piece often played as an entr'acte to Act IV in many productions.

...or Osmosis Jones...